This invention relates to material transporting devices, and in particular to a device for relocating stacks of material from one position to a second position. In the disclosed embodiments, the invention pertains to equipment for handling coils of slit metallic sheet material.
In the coil slitting and processing industry, and as set forth in somewhat greater detail in the following description of the preferred embodiments of the invention, large rolls of sheet material are unrolled, then passed through a slitter which longitudinally cuts the sheet material into a plurality of thinner strips of metal, which are then recoiled, and then handled downstream as required, normally by stacking, palletizing and weighing.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,861,536, assigned to the assignee of the present invention, describes one type of device for transporting coils of material and stacking the coils onto a turntable, the stacked coils being later removed from the turntable at one or more locations. The transporting device of this patent, while representing a significant advance over stacking equipment then in existence, itself can prove to be a bottleneck in a complete line for slitting and processing metal coil since the stacker must reciprocate between an inlet conveyor and the turntable directly beneath the stacker. Thus, while material is being lowered to the turntable, upstream coils are prevented from entering the stacker until the stacker returns to a position to accept the next coil or several coils of material.